IDE drives (more properly called ATA drives) have come a
long way since they were first introduced in 1985 as a replacement for the ST-506/412
interface. Today, one can find 512k buffers, 5400 RPM speeds, sub 10ms seek times, and the
much ballyhooed UltraATA 33 MB/sec transfer rate. We also stand before yet another
advance; Seagates latest Medalist Pro and IBMs Deskstar 14GXP promise 7200 RPM
rotation speeds. As is often the case though, higher figures in popularly quoted specs
dont always seem to correlate to better benchmark figures. Although there are some 8
GB drives available and many > 8 GB products have been announced, the 6.4 GB capacity
is the highest at which every major manufacturer is currently shipping at least one drive.

Initially we began testing these drives using Intels PIIX
v3.01 Bus Mastering Drivers. After the initial benchmarking was completed, however, we
found, as have many others, that the default drivers in Windows 95 OEM Service Release 2
provide better performance with DMA enabled.

A notable omission in this review is
Quantums Bigfoot TX 6.4GB unit. The 5.25" form-factor Bigfoot is positioned as
an low-cost alternative to traditional 3.5" low-profile drives. The Bigfoot is not
intended to be a high-performance drive, however, and lags significantly behind 3.5"
drives in performance.

The Bigfoot is the drive most commonly found
in major retail-brand systems such as Compaq and Hewlett-Packard. Expect a review of the
Quantum Bigfoot on Anand Tech Affiliate: The
Storage Review in the near future.

The boot drive (Western Digital Caviar AC31600) contained
Windows 95 OSR 2.1 patched with Intels 82371xB INF Update and Microsofts
REMIDEUP.EXE fix. The test drive in question was the sole device located on the secondary
controller built into the motherboard. The drives DMA box under System
Properties Device Manager was checked. The tests were run at 1024x768 with 24 bit
color at 85 Hz using small fonts. ZDBops Startup Manager was used to prevent loading
of background applications. ZDBops WinBench 98 v1.0s Disk Test Suites were run
on all test drives.